Elizabeth Zimmerman's I-Cord Cast Off

Whe I started prepping for making Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Suprise Jacket, I was soon interested in finishing it with the oft mentioned but rarely explained i-cord cast off.
Zigzag Stitch's toddlerization of the BSJ was what convinced me to commit. But finding an explanation without turning to page fifty-four of EZ's The Opinionated Knitter proved trickier than I had imagined. A few Google searches later and I found some very helpful videos of versions of the technique on Youtube:

Judy's four-stitch bind off version
Stell66's two- (actually three-) stitch version

And there are many more available.

There are a few versions (i.e., three-stitch vs. four-stitch) kicking around out there on the internet but it seems to boil down to a sort of decreasing shuffle:

Cable cast on three stitches,
Knit one or two,
Knit the next two stitches together through the back of the loops,
Return all stitches to the left needle.
Repeat.

When I knit it, I have the weirdest sense of déja vu. Could it be a derivation of something?